Frisian Islands, Kiel canal, and the Danish archipelago

[mattonthesea]

All being well we should cross to the Baltic next May. Will study your blog closely ?

 

[Laminar Flow]

Interesting. We experienced them about three or four times. Two of them were in fjords (Schlei and Flensburger), so that might have been some kind of channelling effect by the fjord, but the other times were in Sønderborg and on the island of Årø. In the case of Sønderborg it had been blowing easterlies for 2-3 days, so the water had risen, in the other cases it had been westerlies and the water level had dropped.

The one on Sønderborg rose so much that we couldn't climb easily over the anchor from the pontoon (which was fixed, not floating) and we had to go and buy some little foldaway steps to get on! There is a photo of the time in Flensburg here (towards the end) showing a change of perhaps 70-80 cm. In all cases, we had to be really careful to leave enough slack in the bow and stern lines in the box berths to avoid being strung up (which nearly happened on one occasion!).

There was a lot of wind around this year, so maybe that was the reason, although this was our first time in the Baltic, so we are not familiar with what it is normally like. The RCC pilot book also mentions it as a phenomenon.

We sailed to the Baltic in 2018 from Holland via the Kiel canal. We were fairly late in the season and the weather was pretty rough. We holed up in Rovig in the North of Zeeland to sit out a storm. The storm surge was so high, the docks were completely submerged. In the end we had to evacuate as our lines were beginning to slip off the pilings. The exit was rather difficult as it was blowing at least 45kts, I was in water, well above my knees on the dock (not the floaty kind) and we could scarcely make out the submerged docks on the way out. We had a rather exiting sail over to Hundested, where we had quite some fun trying to dock our tub in the high wind and where we then sat it out for a further three days. It was not just a phenomenon, it was bloody phenomenal.
For anyone with a penchant for Viking ships, Roskilde and it's museum is an absolute must.